martinzoo

Ok, how bad is this?

I have been reading Jabem’s required reading for his first college English class…

And guess what? I like it… Weird, huh?

He certainly thinks so.

I just knew when I heard the subject matter that I would want to read it. It’s called Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America.  Because of welfare reforms, many people have had to go into the low income labor market, making minimum wage or barely above. At the writing of this book, minimum wage was only $5.15….which is not much, imo. At lunch with her publisher one day, the author wonders at the feasibility of living and surviving in such meager circumstances. So her publisher encourages her to experiment with the idea and publish what she finds out. During the next months she moves to a new town, gets some cheap housing and a minimum wage job. If at the end of each month, she has not earned enough to make the next month’s rent, she would consider the experiment in THAT town a failure. Then she would move to another town and give it a try again. At the point in the book that I am now, she has been in the Key West area, Portland, Maine, and the Twin Cities, in Minnesota with many different jobs (waitressing, housekeeping, nursing home attendant, and Walmart employee). The only way she can make it is to work two jobs, seven days a week, and she still almost winds up in a homeless shelter.Many of her experiences are harrowing, to say the least. And I was very sympathetic to her plight.

Being a hairstylist since I was seventeen years old, and never making more than $14,000 a year until I opened my own salon, I understood where she was coming from in many instances. If I had not had a husband who made decent money, there was no way I could have kept my independence without going into deep debt.

So while Jabem has not yet finished his required reading, I’m going to finish it. And he’s going to find a lot of post-it notes with Mom’s opinions, and observations about what the author is revealing. Sometimes I think my kids think that we’ve always been this “comfortable,” but I can remember many months, especially when dh was still in school, where we worried ourselves sick that we would not make it with out an embarrassing phone call to the folks.

I can’t wait for him to finish, now. Because it will be interesting to see where his mind goes with this topic. I’m glad VCU chose this book. Each of the incoming freshmen must read it so that they will all have something in common during discussion group meetings. And maybe, because I’ve read it also, he’ll have more insightful thoughts than he would have if I hadn’t read it.